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Dorney Park, like so many other parks at the beginning of the 1920s, was a work in progress. The Allentown, Pennsylvania fun spot was a former fish hatchery-turned resort-turned amusement park in need of a signature top-of-the-line wooden roller coaster to draw the crowds and make the operation successful. 1923 would be the year that Dorney got its first coaster, and what would become the true starting point in the life of a future major player in the amusement world. As was common in those days among parks with single major coasters, Coaster became the name of Dorney Park's new wooden beast. And the people didn't care how original the name was - they came, experienced Dorney's roller coaster, and loved it. Sitting among a quiet forest of weeping willows beside a pond and the Dorney midway in the green Pennsylvania countryside, the Coaster sailed park goers out for a day of thrills and relaxation over its near-2,000-foot run of airtime hills and helped to give the Allentown park a name for itself. Seven years passed, and in 1930 Dorney was out to gain some new ground in the coaster business. But rather than starting from scratch again on a new wooden coaster, they brought back the Philadelphia Toboggan Company to come in and improve upon the old Coaster to create a new experience. They did so by removing the former turnaround on the out and back layout, and adding a diving U-turn in the opposite direction, followed by another turnaround in the other direction, and then a third new turnaround tracing around the first. From there the train would fly over the old rabbit hops back to the station, to finish off some now-2,767 feet of rails. This combination of new elements created a unique double out and back type course from the almost cookie-cutter layout that the Coaster possessed before, coming together with the old portion of the layout to form a truly unique wooden ride that Dorney Park could call its own for years to come. Another more minor change completed the package of uniqueness for Dorney's coaster for the 1989 season, when it was renamed ThunderHawk to help differentiate it from that year's Hercules, which went up halfway across the park as the largest wooden ride in the world. But Hercules would, in the end, be a short-lived ride and no threat to the original Allentown wood, coming down fourteen years after it went up and leaving ThunderHawk as Dorney Park's sole wooden coaster to thrill guests in the second century of its life.

In ThunderHawk's queue, riders-to-be pass under the wooden lift structure and then climb up into the station to climb into a twenty-four-rider train and pull down lapbars into place. All riders secure, the ride is dispatched and starts around a turn just beyond 180 degrees gently sloping into a small trench. The train rolls along and passes under the ride's exit bridge before completing another minor turn to the right and hitting the chain, then clinking slowly up the hill. Riders climb diagonally towards the steel structure of the hypercoaster Steel Force and level at eighty feet where the chain stops and the train angles downwards over the side of the slope. As it plunges, the track veers to the left before leveling fifteen feet above the ground and setting itself up to hurtle over the first speed hop to induce a couple moments of airtime on its trainload of thrill-seekers as they speed between a grove of trees and the wall on the border of the park formed by the lift hill support structure of Steel Force. Up into the first far turnaround the train climbs, banking slightly to the left and then starting to dive. On the way down, the track crosses under track from the return trip before leveling out. ThunderHawk leaps back up again and begins the next turnaround curve, rounding a right-hander of about 225 degrees and then diving towards the ground again. Riders are sent back up and into another turn to the right, this one closer to 135 degrees and rounding the interior of the curve before last. After swooping down, the train begins the final leg of its journey: the final collection of hops leading back to the station. The white track leaps over one, two, three, and four hops, the final one taking the train under the support structure of the lift hill and traveling under the lift for the first brakes, a slight left-hand turn, and the final run to the unloading platform.